


Exiled Brat: Breaking Down the Details of Lotor's Banishment

by The_Violet_Howler



Series: VLD Meta Analysis [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Analysis, Essay, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 07:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19194493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Violet_Howler/pseuds/The_Violet_Howler
Summary: An analysis of the non-Colony details canon provides about what Lotor was up to between his exile and his introduction in Season 3.





	Exiled Brat: Breaking Down the Details of Lotor's Banishment

One of the details that some have found confusing about Lotor’s story is that the specific terms of his exile are never clarified. In S8E2, Zarkon tells Lotor after the destruction of Ventar’s planet that he is  _“hereby banished from the empire. Forced to live out the remainder of your days remembering your failure here.”_ But from what we saw in prior seasons, Lotor clearly wasn’t cut off from the empire completely.  

Let’s take a look back at Lotor’s introduction to refresh everyone’s memory.

Before Lotor takes off his helmet in the arena, our introduction to him comes from gossip among the Galra leadership, represented by Throk and his unnamed fellow commander. Here’s a few of the things they say about Lotor:

_“I’ve heard rumors he fights alongside his enlisted men like a lowly private.”_

_“Worse than that. His top generals aren’t even pure Galra. They’re half-breeds at best. He has no honor.”_

_“Some say he allows the planets he conquers to continue to rule themselves. Can you imagine?”_

While the unnamed commander refers to these details about Lotor as rumors, the accuracy of Throk’s comment about his generals indicates that at least some of these rumors about Lotor are either wholly or mostly true.

Which presents an interesting contradiction: despite being publicly referred to as an “exiled brat”, Lotor apparently still holds a place in the Galra empire with enough authority to have command of his own troops. “Fighting alongside his enlisted men like a lowly private” indicates that there are Galra military units that are officially under Lotor’s command, and implicitly are loyal to him over Zarkon, something supported by the fact that we later see Galra soldiers helping to construct the second Sincline ship in S4E3 Black Site and Galra medics helping to run the Altean Colony in S6E4 The Colony.

The fact that Acxa and the other generals have rank at all and aren’t regarded as pirates or whatever by Throk indicates that despite the distaste towards half-Galra, their rank of general was earned, rather than being a title Lotor conferred on his inner circle to give them legitimacy when he returned from exile.

The fact that he is apparently responsible for bringing planets into the empire indicates that, like Sendak and Ranveig, Lotor has command of a section of territory in the universe that he is responsible for maintaining and expanding. But he still could not defy openly. As Zarkon’s reaction when Haggar tells him about the Sincline ships in S4E3 indicates, Zarkon still keeps Lotor on a leash: any power Lotor has must be something that Zarkon can control and take away on a whim. When Lotor gets power that his abusive father cannot take away,  _that_ is when Zarkon orders his son to be killed on sight.  

And something to think about is that back in S2E13, Haggar says  _“summon Prince Lotor”_. Summon being the key word here, which indicates – as opposed to “ _find_  Prince Lotor” – that the Galra empire knows where Lotor is. Haggar has naturally been spying on him, but unlike her instructions to the generals when sending them to retrieve Sendak in S5E3, her choice of words at the end of Season 2 indicate that Lotor’s current whereabouts are common knowledge to the commanders stationed aboard Zarkon’s flagship.

In a way, it’s another thing that Lotor has in common with Zuko: Zuko was banished from the Fire Nation after the Agni Kai with Ozai, but he still travelled in a Fire Nation ship crewed by Fire Nation soldiers and was still be allowed access to Fire Nation colonies and military bases in the Earth Kingdom in his search for the Avatar. Zhao only tried to arrest Zuko in The Winter Solstace when Zuko attempted to sail into Fire Nation waters.

Similarly, Lotor has command over imperial troops, as well as access and control over a few imperial bases at or beyond the edge of the Galra Empire’s territory, and enough authority to bring planets into the empire, but with his parents watching over his shoulder for any signs of disloyalty.

TL;DR: Zarkon may have verbally banished Lotor from the empire, but in practice, he was reassigned to a position at/outside the borders of the empire like Ranveig: far enough away that Zarkon doesn’t have to look at his “darkest shame”, but close enough that Lotor holds some power in the imperial military and is still within his father’s reach.  


End file.
